iTunes gets into social networking sales through Bebo

Apple has made its first partnership with a social networking site that allows …

Apple announced a partnership this morning in which UK and Irish users will be able to buy iTunes songs directly through social networking site Bebo. Users won't have to leave a musician's or band's Bebo page to go buy a song from the iTunes Store—instead they'll be able to purchase the songs right there on the page.

The partnership marks the first official deal of this nature that Apple has struck with a social networking site. Although Apple has partnered with sites like Facebook in the past to give away free iTunes downloads, no site has yet integrated iTunes purchases directly into the interface. With Facebook's new open API, however, it wouldn't be surprising to see something like this show up on Facebook sooner rather than later.

The real target will be MySpace, however. MySpace not only has the largest user base of all social networking sites in the world; it also has the most bands, artists, and musicians and gives them tons of exposure. Those musicians always have music on their profile pages, and it would provide a major sales portal for iTunes if such a thing were to be integrated there. The big problem, of course, would be negotiating such a deal with the News Corp. monster. MySpace is used to having its own way, as is Apple, and so the two could butt heads over profit sharing if they were ever in talks about that kind of store integration.